her beauty I came to study, but her hair, her
complexion, and her hands. The former was brown, the brown of that same
lock I remembered to have seen in the jury's hands at the inquest; and
her skin, where fever had not flushed it, was white and smooth. So were
her hands, and yet they were not a lady's hands. That I noticed when I
first saw her. The marks of the rings she no longer wore, were not
enough to blind me to the fact that her fingers lacked the distinctive
shape and nicety of Miss Althorpe's, say, or even of the Misses Van
Burnam; and though I do not object to this, for I like strong-looking,
capable hands myself, they served to help me understand the face, which
otherwise would have looked too spiritual for a woman of the peevish and
self-satisfied character of Louise Van Burnam. On this innocent and
appealing expression she had traded in her short and none too happy
career. And as I noted it, I recalled a sentence in Miss Ferguson's
testimony, in which she alluded to Mrs. Van Burnam's confidential remark
to her husband upon the power she exercised over people when she raised
her eyes in entreaty towards them. "Am I not pretty," she had said,
"when I am in distress and looking up in this way?" It was the
suggestion of a scheming woman, but from what I had seen and was seeing
of the woman before me, I could imagine the picture she would thus make,
and I do not think she overrated its effects.

Withdrawing from her side once more, I made a tour of the room. Nothing
escaped my eyes; nothing was too small to engage my attention. But while
I failed to see anything calculated to shake my confidence in the
conclusions I had come to, I saw but little to confirm them. This was
not strange; for, apart from a few toilet articles and some
knitting-work on a shelf, she appeared to have no belongings; everything
else in sight being manifestly the property of Miss Althorpe. Even the
bureau drawers were empty, and her bag, found under a small table, had
not so much in it as a hair-pin, though I searched it inside and out for
her rings, which I was positive she had with her, even if she dared not
wear them.

When every spot was exhausted I sat down and began to brood over what
lay before this poor being, whose flight and the great efforts she made
at concealment proved only too conclusively the fatal part she had
played in the crime for which her husband had been arrested. I had
reached her arraignment before a magistrate, an